Should you use imitation vanilla extract in your baking?

This advice is not new. In fact, it makes its rounds every few years or so. Let's start with the truth in advice. 

This claim is based on the fact that pure vanilla extract is between 30% and 50% alcohol, which will bake off at high baking temperatures. It is also true that many of the hundreds of flavoring components in pure vanilla are physically fragile and will be destroyed by high temperatures. (This is one reason we are committed to cold extraction at Cook's.) There will inevitably be some "loss" of vanilla flavor in high-temperature baking using pure vanilla extract. However, going from the flavor of pure vanilla extract to the flavor of imitation vanilla extract is a huge step down. It is not a subtle difference. 

Imitation vanilla extract is made up of usually 2-5 flavor compounds. When isolated from their natural source, i.e. the vanilla bean, these flavor compounds are cloying and chemical. If you use imitation vanilla in your baking, your baked goods will taste like vanillin. They will be imparted with the sweet and cloying taste of the imitation extract. We all know what these baked goods taste like. I always think of the thickly cut and thickly iced sugar cookie at the grocery store covered in sprinkles and in the shape and color of the nearest holiday. I know these cookies are popular, and they are always tempting, but every time I take a bite, it is an overly sweet and artificial disappointment. If you prefer this taste, then by all means use imitation vanilla extract in your baked goods. 

On the other hand, pure vanilla extract has hundreds of natural flavoring components that lend complexity and richness to ANY application. Some of them are broken down in the baking process, but even if a hundred components are "lost", hundreds more remain. The breakdown of the extract would have to be nearly complete to reduce the extract to the equivalent imitation extract and this total breakdown isn't happening. Anyone who has tasted a chocolate chip cookie made with pure vanilla can taste the difference. I stand by that, despite blind taste tests that cooking journals conduct and count as evidence for their assertions about pure vanilla extract. 

I think that what these testers are tasting is a difference in strength of flavor. Many times, the taste testers are asked which cookie has a more intense vanilla flavor, not which tastes better. Well, every time the imitation vanilla extract will surpass the pure vanilla extract in strength. You could test the same thing in any flavor. Test a strawberry against an imitation strawberry flavor and people will say that the strawberry flavor is more intense, because it is. But intensity isn't the best marker of taste. It's the quality of the taste that matters. 

Now, obviously, pure vanilla extract is more expensive than imitation vanilla extract, but here is my recommendation based on 30 years of cookie making: use more pure vanilla extract than what the recipe has advised. At some point, nearly everyone who ever wrote a recipe decided that one teaspoon of vanilla was the appropriate amount of flavor in nearly every application. This is not adequate even when the recipe specifies pure vanilla extract. You must at least double this recommendation, especially if you are using high temperatures, I usually substitute teaspoons for tablespoons. If, however, you are using imitation vanilla extract, a teaspoon will be more than enough, and any more imitation vanilla flavor would be unappetizing to most people. 

I highly suggest buying a larger size of pure vanilla extract, keeping it in your pantry, and using it liberally in all your baked goods. This is the number one thing that will make your baked goods delicious. (Maybe it ties with using real butter.) Unlike with imitation vanilla extract, you cannot use too much (unless you add so much to change the consistency of the dough or batter). 

Please do not take the advice to switch to an imitation vanilla flavor. Nothing can and nothing ever will beat the flavor of a finely crafted pure vanilla extract.